Sue Sick Sue

September 23, 1990

Mom

        This is not an easy letter to write, but after spending a lot of time in prayer and after talking to my counselor, my pastors and support people at church, I've decided to write.

        Off and on through the last year I have been seeing a counselor.  The last three months I have been seeing her on a regular basis.  I've also been going to a co-dependant group that Peg, a friend from the church, does.  I've spent a lot of time with my pastors in the last few months.  Starting with the memory of Dad molesting me that came back a little over a year ago, many painful memories of my childhood from ages 4-11 have come back.  I know that you, Dad, Grandfather and Grandmother physically and sexually abused me.  I know that all of you belonged to a satanic cult where I was ritualistically abused and was forced to watch and participate in many repeated atrocities.  I originally wanted to deny these memories, I didn't want to believe they could possibly happen.

        I have talked to a pastor who has dealt a bit with satanism and he says the way I've remembered things, with all the details, validates the memories.  I've talked to several counselors, my pastors, to Elaine and people at church and all believe and support what I am remembering.  I've talked to another girl who was involved in a satanic cult and a lot of her memories are similar to mine.  I've also talked to a detective at the police department who says there is a lot of evidence that supports
there are satanic cults in this area.

        While these memories have been intensly painful and hard to work through, I have been able, through Jesus Christ's love and power in my life, to be delivered and healed from them.  Jesus has had His hand on me from childhood on, loving and protecting me. I have been able, through the love of Jesus in my life, to forgive all of you.  What happened makes me sad, but the intense anger and hatred is no longer there.

        I'd like you to know, Mother, that Jesus Christ can and will forgive you if you aknowledge the past, confess it, and ask Him for forgiveness and accept it, and ask Him into your heart and life.  He can and will forgive you if you're honest before Him.

        Until you personally can come to a place where you acknowledge the past, and your part in it, and are sorry for it and want to be forgiven by Jesus and by me, then we can no longer have any type of relationship.  I feel it would be hypocritical to try to base a family relationship on the lies and pain of the past. You have to want to make things right.  God's forgiveness and love is the only hope you have, and He's there waiting for you.  There is nothing so bad that Jesus Christ can't forgive.

        If you would like to talk to my pastor about any of this his name is Doug Malott and he can be reached at the church between the hours of 10 and 4, my time.  His number there is 326-1571.  You can also talk to my counselor.  Her name is Lady O'Kelly and she can be reached between the hours of 8 and 4.  Her number is 838-4128. Also, if you would like to come out here and talk to me with either my counselor or my pastors that would be alright, too.  However you would have to stay at a motel.

        I'm not trying to be hard, it's just time for the truth to come out and be honestly dealt with. Until you can deal with this in the way that I've outlined, please don't call or write. Please don't waste time calling or writing to say this never happened or that my perceptions are wrong, I know it happened.

       Sue


I feel slighted.  Why wasn't I accused of Satan worship and our unfair family affair? I was 8 to 15 years old during all this - you would think I'd have noticed.

Letter broke mom's heart.  Not communicated with Sue since.  Which has helped me financially - 2-3 times a year I'd send couple hundred dollars to get her through her latest end of the world crisis . . . so that's 3,000 Sue-less dollars since. Talk about biting helping hand.

The misspellings are the person's who typed the letter.  Sue can't type, doesn't know
many of these words, or how to spell them.  Love to hear her using ritualistic, atrocities, hypocritical.  Sue's from the low end of the gene pool.  Not the brightest bulb about.

Her job was taking care of mentally and physically challenged children.  Watched her reach over and pinch one of the kids when she thought no one could see. Saw her hurt small animals when young.

If there's a Hell, Suzzanna B. Smith's got a ticket to ride. And I'll personally hold the door when she boards.

As Mother Dwarf Lay Dead and Dying

For three minutes there, I was a murder suspect.  But enough of me, let's talk about mom.

1974, Mother Dwarf mentioned Leonard Cohen's music sounded like a soundtrack for a
funeral home.  Last week she died listening to I'm Your Man here at Smith's funeral parlor & art studio.

Guess she was right.  Give the lady a rose.  Why not - Christ arose, and he was dead.

She hit the emergency room September 29, 2004.  Took her 9 months, 68 pounds, 3 intensive cares, 3 emergency rooms, 3 near deaths, 2 hospitals, and 3 therapy homes
to get back home.

Then 7 days to die.

Biblical implications here. . . mom deconstructs her mortal life in 6 days, then really rests on the seventh day . . . and the eighth . . . and the ninth . . . forever and ever null mom.

I could have saved her - but she would have killed me, and I'm way past a good looking corpse.

I make a good son though.  The massive antibiotics the doctors used to kill her blood and bone infections also killed her kidneys - so they sewed a needle into her neck like
good little vampires and put her on dialysis four hours a day, three days a week.

Broke my heart to see her suffer so, so said I'd give her one of my kidneys for ransplant just to get her off the bloodsucking machines.

Brought tears to her eyes.  Couldn't have that.  Ruin my rep.

Next visit said hey mom, hope you didn't think I was just giving you my kidney.  It's more of a rental situation.  "But, you wouldn't repossess from your own Mother, would you?" Of course not - pause - not as long as made your payments. . . I'm no monster.

Laughter much better than tears.

February 2000, Mom waited as car passed, then stepped into the crosswalk.  Driver stopped and backed up to park in a space he'd passed - without looking, of course. Backed into Mother Dwarf.  Crushed her knee.  Knocked her to the asphalt.  Made the back of her head all soft and squishy - then fled to eastern Europe without even saying sorry.

I have his name, country and the name of his fiancée who's car it was around here somewhere.  Once I find them, I'm putting them online.  Maybe under Unwanted - For Murder.

Because that's the day Mother Dwarf started dying, though neither of us knew it. Doctors put in metal erector set and slapped her leg back together at an odd angle that got ever odder.  Our medical system seems not to care about the old and broken unless they're money green.  Must be their hypocritical oath.

Takes a village to raise a child.  Takes a bottom line to repair the old.

Last September, a week away from her new knee, I come home from work to find mom sitting in bed.  She couldn't walk.  Had sat there all day - pain pills and phone out of reach - waiting for me to rescue her.

It wasn't my fault, so why do I feel so bad?  This rescue business reeks of guilt.

Intensive care found both her blood and bone joints abound in bacterial infection. Also heart arrhythmia, pseudo gout, blood clots, bacterial clumps which might head for her heart, and more long bad names the doctors said quickly.

She began hallucinating - knights plotting to kill the king and take the castle.  Dead men on concrete.  Thunder and lightening in the room.  Took her first near death dance, her first death dance back.

      "Take one crisis forward / Two disasters back
       Do the death dance baby / Spin the man in black"

Out to a rest home muscle rebuilding program, where the doctor - either for profit or stupidity - switches her heart medicine without telling her or her doctors, and puts her back into intensive care twice, almost killing her both times.

I do more grieving for the Pre-Dead Mom Who Wouldn't Die.  Grief on the installment plan.

Checked with a higher authority - asked my magic 8-Ball if mom would make it.  Told me over and over mom was meat, would die that weekend.  Weeks later picked it up and said - you lied to me, didn't you? Its reply? - "It is most definite."  An honest liar . . . hmmm, that sort of sounds like me.

Told mom the Gnostics believe Hell is this life on Earth.  "They got that right," she snapped.

More hops skips tests of mom's mortal coil caught in reoccurring rhythms, but finally she gets just strong enough to fool the therapists into releasing her.

Her first 3 days home, mom was delighted.  The 4th day she told me how hard everything was here.  She wasn't strong enough yet for studio life.  Came home 2-3 weeks too early. She fought so stubbornly for 9 months to get back here - but once home saw her pain and limitations had months or more to go.

Plus everything she'd fought to get back to - her art supplies, her found object stash, her giant TV showing Indians baseball - were all one floor down.  She was sixteen steep pain wrenching steps from her home.

Wednesday night she was quiet.  Thursday night deeply depressed.

Friday night she was hallucinating again.  Asked me who my friends were.

What friends?

"The three weird people you brought home with you."

Where are they?

"One's under my mattress."

What do they do?

"They find out things."

Are they dead or alive?

She looks at them awhile , then says "I can't tell."

It was call an ambulance, or watch her die.  She'd made it clear she was NOT going back to the hospital.  Told me before, she'd wished she hadn't made it - even suggested a few times not quite joking I should kill her . . . each time told her I'd have to make it look like an accident so I could collect her insurance money.

Saturday morning she asked me to sit her up.  Hugged me as I did.  That was the last she spoke.

Over the next hour I held her hand, played her favorite Leonard Cohen (I'm Your Man, The Future), talked calmly and gently to her, told her she could go or stay, it was up to her, I'd do whatever was required either way.

Watch her breathing stop 10 - 15 times.  She'd breath out, be still for 20-40 seconds, then start again in wet, shallow gasps.  Watch the vein in her neck twitch less and less till not at all.  She died at noon.

Tried to call her nurse, but my voice broke.  Start bawling when I try to speak.  EMS came at one.  Told them mom had a Do Not Resuscitate order.  They asked to see it.

Doctor hadn't delivered it yet.  

EMS said the law required them to try to revive her.  

Told him I understood, but I had to honor mom's wishes, so we were going to have a problem.

Looked at me.  Touched mom.  She was cold.  "How long?" An hour.  "Why didn't you call us right way?" Couldn't talk.  Gently he said I'd done the right thing, because it was too late to revive her.

Policeman came.  Said "Art on the walls . . . air conditioning . . . I must be in heaven."  He showed me photos of his own learned-from-TV paintings.  Then his Lieutenant called, was stopping by.  He told me not to get upset by anything the Lieutenant said because the man was a little loony.

Loony Looey immediately assumes I murdered mom.  Begins interrogating me in a rude
voice.  Try not to smile.  Explain she was in rest homes for 9 months, home one week, had myriad medical problems all documented by multiple doctors - show the pile of pill bottles, and then show him mom - who looks concentration camp frail.

Lieutenant sort of shrugs, says "Sorry for your loss", tosses me a small wave, and leaves. Now that's good cop / bad cop . . . or rather good cop and moron.

Mom didn't have to die, but I couldn't force her to live.  She was happy for three days. Spent 4th day mulling her situation.  Then three days dying.  Can't fault her logic.  Might do it myself in her slippers.

I knew these past months of being a rat race worker as well as mom's sole life support system and errand boy was tearing at me.  I'd started snarling at minor irritants, my inner light darkening.  But I had no idea how bad it was until death lifted her problems and my lack of solutions from my soul.  Whole nine months had been mom and work and work and mom and mom and work - with but a tired wee bit of me every now and then for a way tired way irritable wee bitter me.

I've given my lawyer employers six months notice.  After December 2, no lying lawyers, no dying mom.  Just a lazy boy up a lazy river in the noon day sun.

Picked up mom today in her cheap cardboard box.  Some dawn soon release Cat's and her ashes.

Use mom's box, and the even cheaper cardboard box Las Vegas shipped Cat home in 1987, and maybe the Funeral Parking Only sign I stole in Baltimore in 1975 - and make a piece of art, though doubt already the stolen sign will fit. . . too negative for
positive situation.

Call it Madonna & Child, except Madonna reminds me of mediocre music and pedophilic
priests.

Good Rat Mom Prey Has No Name

Speaking of poetry in slow motion - 1995, Mother Dwarf was slowly creeping up the stairs(way before her 2000 crushed knee) due to old age over weight arthritis, so I rushed to thetop of the stairs, and in a low slow menacing voice said 'p - r - e - y.'

'No, no.   No prey.   I'm your Mother.'

Sad to say I had to say 'Prey . . . has . . . no . . . name.'

Almost damaged her - she started laughing, had to hold the banister to keep from falling.

Prey Has No Name became the title to a lost poem she since saved.

But first . . .

Dead mom returned laugh, so laugh last laugh I.

During my previous periods of employment, I'd give mom $50 each paycheck - for lab fees, since she was my lab rat.  Told her I was going to stick pins in her to see if it caused my voodoo doll any pain.

My first paycheck current employment, I gave her $100 - with a note saying

You Good Rat.
Good Rat
get raise!

Hours after she died, wandering her space for company, I picked up her money jar - a 1985 S. Judson Wilcox ceramic paper bag containing 80 paper dollars, one Sacajuwea metal dollar, and - at the bottom of the bag - my Good Rat note.

Started laughing.  And crying.  And laughing.  (Money does that to me.)

Not bad when the dead make you laugh so soon after dying.  And, the dead work cheap. Except in memories.  There they cost.

Kept telling mom all these years I didn't know who she was, or how she got in, but she could stay because I needed someone slow around for when the monsters attacked.

She said, "But there are no monsters."

"There will be."   And I was right.  And she was so slow, Death got her instead of me.

Na nana na na.

I as child fathered Mother Dwarf.  Gave mom Mother Dwarf name back in 1975. Odd how long ago recent is when one is 59.

Bringing a lady to meet mom, I told her not to be upset, but needed to warn her mom was a hunchback dwarf.  Explained how the leather jacket I'd given mom for Xmas was already ruined because everyone kept rubbing her hump for luck, which made the leather smooth and shiny.

(It's the details that matter).

As I introduced them, I watched her trying to peek at mom's back - even though at 5 foot 10 inches and 250 pounds, mom was no dwarf.

She mentioned my lie to mom, who immediately took to the name.  A 79 year old mother when she died, she was but a 30 year Mother Dwarf.  They go so young these days.

Death is father to weight as well - after Cat AND dad died, mom ballooned to 320 pounds. Then in 18 months of dieting, she dropped to 218 before going to emergency room.

Five months into her intensive care rehabilitation bounce, she weighed 150.  68 pounds lost in five months - that's 14 pounds a month, half a pound a day.  Lot of skin, bone, not much flesh.  And what flesh there was, hurt.   Said she wouldn't recommend it as a weight loss program.

Now she's 5 pounds.  So is Cat.  Got 10 pounds of close relatives sharing my space. Tomorrow morning, they're out of here.  Take them down to water wall and dust the wind.

The saved poem?   I read Prey Has No Name at 1995 World Cup Coffee House reading with Daniel Thompson.  Didn't quite work, so i trashed it, lost it, or forgot about it for next 10 years - until found copy in dead mom stuff last week.

Still didn't work - but cut a couple of lines, change a few words, re-space it two by two a la Noah, and . . .


   Prey Has No Name

   We fish with human face
   Such depths of want

   And need
   Heart drums beat

   To pulse blood hope
   In womb warm wonder

   Lying lizard in the sun
   In spring full breadth

   Of coiled light
   Brain bridged push

   Mute witness
   For those who died

   In black and white
   Before elective gray


So I guess my inheritance is $81, one lost poem, and many magic memories.

Not a bad legacy.

Not much to say about dead baby Jay.

Born 1953. Cried 9 months. Died. Colic.

Colic - sounds like a dog collar for Lassie . . . or a college for collies . . . or a country boy cowlick.

Hmmmm . . .

Jay did die in the country - Paradise Prairie, 20 miles east of Spokane Washington in he midst of the alfalfa wheat fields surrounding our rented 40 acre farm.

And we did have a miniature collie named Lassie.

We also had a cow - which I milked 6 in the morning, 6 at night, when Pappy was rick
block stone laying out of town. The poor go where the pay roll.

May be a conspiracy here.

More likely, Jay just saw how hard life is, how much it can cost, felt the fight unfair, and checked out before his first Happy Birthday Sucker bonus.

Bye bye baby bye bye. See you on the downsize.

I wish sometimes I had been as smart. Took Jay 9 months. Cat 30 years. Pappy 66. Dwarf 79. I've put in 59 so far - and no way am I walking away from that much pain doubt and misery inside and out without some sort of golden parachute Santa clause payoff.

And I'm not talking white wings and golden hellos, I'm talking now - this side the divide.

I'm doing the time, so gimme some prime.

Got balance sheets to consider. Debits. Credits. Gross nets. Fast moving men bearing
white coats with wads of government money wearing imaginary numbers.

And yet, I seriously doubt my check's even in the mail.

I keep sending them invoices - Hey, look at me . . . I'll sell out . . . I'll sell my soul . . . just give me a face-saving price. A condom minimal. Maybe some chest hair so I can wear gold chains.

While we're at it, how about a couple extra inches on my wee one, because I'm tired of all these internet folk telling me how small it is. How'd they find out anyway?

But this is about Jay - the live baby that was really dead, the dead baby that wasn't there.

My 7 year old me did not know the baby I looked in on was dead - so I saw a still, sleeping baby. Very still, evidently. Mom was acting odd, but mom's don't often make sense anyway.

I said goodbye and walked my purgatorial mile of aggressive horses and angry dogs to the Norman Rockwell white clapboard two room country school house up the lane. Four grades per room. 30 kids total. Fifth grade was three two years later when two of us skipped the sixth. Third was to skip, but her mom said no. Later on when I was 15 in classrooms with 16 and 17 year olds who had cars and condoms, I understood why.

When I got home that afternoon, mom told me Jay had died during the night. Asked to see him because I wanted to see what death looked like. Mom said sorry kid you can't he's gone.

Felt cheated. I'd seen a dead baby, but had looked with the wrong eyes.

Still feel cheated. Perhaps that explains my stupid dead baby joke to mom 22 years later using Jay's name. Not a smooth move. More like the Anti-Christ of Exlax.

Mom said she was only going to have three children, which made my brother Cat # 4 of 3.

So I started telling this story - how the night Jay died, I'd come in from the outhouse and looked in on him - when I had a vision, saw Jay's entire future: he'd grow up straight, and narrow minded, wear white shirts with short hair and skinny ties, become something low and slimy like a lawyer, or a Republican. Told mom since she was only having 3, I could not allow #3 to be Dick Nixonite, and smothered Jay - so cooler Cat could come along.

I thought it rather clever, and funny - until I saw the hurt in mom's eyes. Figured twenty two years would have soothed the wound. I was wrong, amazingly wrong. You do not make dead baby jokes to mothers who have dead babies.

Although, she'd laughed previously when I came in licking my fingers saying "you know that soft spot in baby's head . . .?" And she found my babies belong - in cages or soup cans somewhat amusing.

So for sure I did not mention a horrible thought I'd been tussling with. I had said I smothered Jay because of reading an article about children 3-4 years old suffocating their baby brothers or sisters in retaliation for losing their mother's attention and affection. Everything I'd read screamed sister Sue had killed Jay, and all I knew of Sue inside agreed. I've often wondered if that's what twisted Sue so later in life - it's
a lot more plausible than her Satanic abuse excuse.

And likely just as much a lie.

I've learned of the death of my own three ways past -
   the bait and switch of the live dead baby for no baby at all;
   the two late night phone calls of dead Cat and Dad;
   and the hour spent holding mom's hand while watching her die.

Of the three, I'll take door #3 every time.

And what's in store for our winner, Johnny? Why, it's more PAIN . . . the winner gets to LIVE ON, and HURT LONGER. I ache, therefore I am.

In death it is better, but NOT easier, to be holding and helping, rather than
hearing second hand.

Now mom's gone, I'm going to take part of my $81 inheritance and apply it to what I lost not knowing I had a dead baby brother - I could have made three, four dollars easy from the neighbor farm kids who'd have paid a quarter apiece to see.

And that was 52 years ago, when $3 was serious money.

Ash To Ash After